It's not the October update we deserve, but the one we need. On 17 December 2012, a mere four days ahead of schedule, fragments of a mysterious object from space struck Earth's surface. What happened next was a cataclysm beyond anything humanity had experienced prior. Enormous tsunamis...
Tldr:
respective faction priorities
Pacify the population
Automate the economy
Conservate human culture
Automate human survival
Uplift humanity
Compared to TI base game factions:
Kill all the Aliens
Make Peace with the Aliens
Profit from the Aliens
Serve the Aliens
Run Away from the Aliens
Protect humanity by killing aliens
Protect humanity by serving aliens
That's what it says on the blurb, but I don't know what it means. I guess pacify means doing a human hive, automate is the illuminati from Deus ex, and uplift is vague transhumanism but what about the others
That's what it says on the blurb, but I don't know what it means. I guess pacify means doing a human hive, automate is the illuminati from Deus ex, and uplift is vague transhumanism but what about the others
It's what it says on the tin. Challenge constricts the development of technology and culture so that human masses remain recognizably human and Self-Sustain just wants to give everyone enough resources and power to do whatever so that everyone decides for themselves what they want to do.
Basic summary for both: Sci-Fi Magical Girls vs. the Alien Invasion, but this time with the aid of a helpful AI Assistant as well as an item shop provided by helpful aliens. They get points for killing hostile aliens and protecting people.
So not exactly the same, but they've done a reasonably good job of temporarily filling the gaping BAHHSCQ-shaped hole in my life. Anyone else have anything?
That's... hmm, this'll be pretty opinionated, but here you go. 5: Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou, Nichijou, (Antagonists will never be on screen, no combat, you'd all be wearing uniforms that are not!WWII!IJA, MC probably named Nippon Banzai, Perth would fly over to Tokyo so the quest now takes...
All this activity has gotten me hungering for more of this again, so I've been skipping through the chapters re-reading some of my favorite scenes and something came to mind. I'd really love to see a snippet covering the briefing the instructors got on Anna prior to her arrival. That one happened is obvious in the way they treat her. Not just the respect, that would have come anyway as long as they knew about Sekhmet, but the very specific eggshells they walk on in regards to her. It's clear someone gave them at least a broad overview of her psych eval.
Avalanche is still around and active in the discord, and willing to answer lore and background questions. So obviously not completely divorced from the project. That's enough for me to hold on to hope.
Can we maybe stop dogpiling on that guy? It maybe could've been stated a bit more politely, but he does have a point: the odds are relatively low that Avalanche will continue the story, even if the community keeps on trucking on its own inertia.
Can we maybe stop dogpiling on that guy? It maybe could've been stated a bit more politely, but he does have a point: the odds are relatively low that Avalanche will continue the story, even if the community keeps on trucking on its own inertia.
Why would you expect the mods to give a flying fuck about randos wanting a thread locked when the OP doesn't want it locked? Unless jackasses are breaking rules, it's no ones business but Avalanche's.
As long as it doesn't turn into a chatroom again, which hasn't happened since the Discord server opened, there's no reason to lock it. It'll probably go dormant on it's own within the month.
So we both did, that's pretty cool. Most of the stories I read I found in the signatures of other people, but its a double-edged sword when it results in me having about 30 extra tabs open after reading just one chapter and all the replies that come after it.
L(° O °L)
Happy New Year, SV! Or it will be in a few more hours, anyway.
It's been two months since the anniversary announcement, and seeing as New Year's Day is also a moderately sacred day for BAHHSCQ (technically 4 January), it's as good a time as any for an update on how the mod is going.
Current Progress
Nations
As this scenario is much more Earth-centric than vanilla TI, more agency is needed on the part of the various actors on Earth in order to keep the pre-Antagonist era interesting. Thus, all nations will have Agendas which define the domestic and foreign policy objectives they pursue, and the variations in their behaviours and mechanics from the baseline.
The ten Agenda types featured in the scenario are:
Morganic: good for getting a lot of Money and GDP quickly, but rapidly stratifies society.
Communist: good at increasing living standards, but tends to be isolated and suffer from propaganda wars.
Liberalizing: good for increasing Democracy and free trade, but is politically unstable and vulnerable to backsliding.
Academician: good for improving Research output, but tends to disregard ethics and efficiency.
Interventionist: good for going to war a lot, but creates a lot of enemies.
Revolutionary: good for defending one's independence, but bad at compelling obedience.
Expansionist: good at maintaining larger empires and spheres of influence, but is inherently unsustainable.
Disruptive: good at ruining other nations' fun, but not so good at developing itself.
Peacekeeping: good at keeping Unrest low, but bad at war.
Stabilizing: good for rapidly rebuilding, but bad at asserting itself on the world stage.
In addition to their passive bonuses and penalties, nations will regularly take actions and trigger events based on their Agenda type, which may sometimes be helpful, but are just as likely to be a nuisance for factions seeking to control and harness their power and resources for themselves.
Nations will periodically change their Agenda through a process I've labelled Mandate Renewal, which essentially simulates the effects of regular elections and other political processes (whether legitimate or not). Whether the Agenda changes or not depends on if the nation was able to fulfil certain performance targets beforehand.
While these Agendas are intended to be orthogonal to the ideologies held by the five factions (so that Morganic hyper-capitalism can just as easily serve the purposes of Domesticate, Enlighten, or Self-Sustain), it will be possible for factions to develop an affinity with one or more Agenda types. This encourages them to promote said Agendas worldwide, at least until the time comes to institute direct Valkyrie Government over their nations.
Another method through which individual nations are distinguished qualitatively, rather than just quantitatively, is the addition of Special Mechanics which apply uniquely to certain nations. Said mechanics are intended to add flavour and variety on the geoscape, as well as affect the decisions of which nations to seize and develop on a basis other than how much map painting they can do.
These mechanics are based almost entirely on vibes and memes, and any relationship they have with the actual nations in question is purely coincidental.
One of the occasionally criticized aspects of TI is that the cube root of a nation's GDP is used to calculate its available Investment Points, which causes significantly diminishing returns for large nations. While I don't plan to change this basic premise, mechanisms to alter the exponent used to convert GDP to IPs will be available, so that factions which like big nations and cannot lie can get more bang for their buck as the scenario progresses. Even small increases in the exponent can greatly improve IP yields – and with all economic growth and development that needs to occur in this scenario simply to return to pre-Impact levels, you'll need them.
At the start of the scenario, nations will have pre-set tax policies which vary IP yields based on different stats, namely GDP per capita, Unrest, and Inequality. In the future, it may be possible to change these through the Set National Priority mission.
The Spoils priority now also provides factions with material resources (Water, et al.) based on a nation's total mining yields. This both better distinguishes it from Funding and provides a greater incentive to use it.
Arcologies
Arcologies are the primary method through which nations will be rebuilt, and a sizeable variety of modules are planned to be researchable and buildable by factions. It is worth noting that a T1 Arcology only really has 2 free slots once the local resource extractor and power source are built; it's only when T2 Arcologies become available that they start to resemble the ones we see in the quest.
So far, the following features of Arcology modules have been implemented:
- Modules provide bonuses to Investment Points spent on priorities in the host nation.
- Modules increase the HP regeneration of faction-aligned armies in the host region.
- Modules increase the starting XP of new armies built in the host region.
- Modules increase the combat XP gains for armies headquartered in the host region.
- Modules increment the stats of the host nation every month.
Additionally, resource outputs from Arcologies are now scaled between 75% and 125% of their nominal value depending on the popularity of the controlling faction.
Finally, on the cosmetic front, I have figured out a decent source of Earth landscape backgrounds for each Arcology site, so we are no longer stuck with the placeholder Martian landscape! \o/
Terrestrial Warfare
As hinted at in the anniversary announcement, a simple experience system has been implemented for armies on the geoscape. XP is accumulated from successful attacks against enemy armies and regions; higher XP levels will improve army performance in combat. (Brand new armies with no experience will correspondingly receive a penalty to performance.) The amount of XP gained in combat, and granted to newly-built armies, can be improved by the presence of certain Arcology modules in the army's home region. To reflect turnover, armies will slowly lose XP over time, so keeping them in combat abroad and spending IPs on militarist priorities back home will be good ideas.
The formula to determine the rate at which armies regenerate when not in combat has also been rewritten, being roughly half the rate seen in vanilla TI. Of note is that higher Miltech levels will reduce regeneration due to the relevant hardware and training being harder to replace; this can be counteracted by increasing the automation of your faction, nations, and Arcologies. (Disregard is especially strong in this regard.) Armies can also now regenerate in completely occupied enemy regions, although it will not be especially fast.
Valkyries
The mod now supports the addition of new army types, the first of which to be implemented was naturally the Valkyrie Groups. These come with their own movement rules, combat rules, and UI text and illustrations.
Valkyrie Groups are loyal to their home Arcology and not to their home nation. This is beneficial in that a faction will retain control over them as long as they continue to control their Arcologies, regardless of any political developments in the host nation; but if an Arcology lacks the Valkyrie Academies to support all their Valkyrie Groups (say, because someone blew them or their power supplies up), said Valkyrie Groups will be rendered homeless and either go rogue or defect.
As mentioned in the anniversary announcement, Valkyrie Groups' greatest asset is their Impeller field. It augments their offense by increasing the damage inflicted to enemy armies and aids their defense by absorbing incoming damage in lieu of their HP. Both of these functions consume the Valkyrie Group's Impeller based on the strength of the opposition, an abstraction of the fact that, in-quest, Valkyries' combat uptime is limited by several factors and they soon need to return and resupply. Both the maximum Impeller field and its regeneration rate are improved by higher XP levels; researching new techniques will improve its combat efficacy. Notably, Valkyries can also regenerate Impeller in combat, although this is far slower; only higher-level Valkyrie Groups and Three Hundred Wings can really count on it.
Additionally, the presence of multiple allied Valkyrie Groups stacked in a region allows them to overlap their Impeller fields, enhancing the effects described above based on the average of their XP levels. This too can eventually be enhanced with projects.
As air units, Valkyrie Groups ignore the effects of rugged regions and can fly to anywhere in the world that their home nation is allowed to go. The main constraints to their movements are more political, logistical, and bureaucratic.
Later faction projects will allow Valkyries to fly directly to their destinations (instead of needing to individually cross the airspace of every region in between), and to teleport instantly at the cost of draining their Impeller.
Miscellaneous
The Intel Screen has been revamped somewhat, with the environmental data compressed to free up space, and additional global demographic data being listed here.
The Settings functionality of Unity Mod Manager has also been implemented, allowing players (and modders) to adjust various game constants while the game is running.
Finally, a respectable amount of progress has been made with finding suitably anime-ized images to replace the various in-game illustrations.
Present Scope
The current objective for the project is to release something playable covering the pre-Antagonist era of the scenario. This is a span of time that is planned to encompass features including, but not limited to:
Managing populations and resettling refugees.
Recruiting, training, and employing Valkyrie councillors.
Constructing T1 and T2 Arcologies.
Managing STRATNET allocations.
Preventing nations from collapsing, managing various Agendas and Special Mechanics, and yes, doing a little bit of map painting.
Acquiring Higgs from Breaches.
Rebuilding nations up to and beyond pre-Impact standards of prosperity (representing at least 500% GDP growth for the richest nations that exist at scenario start).
Completing early faction objectives as they start to develop and distinguish their ideology beyond mere survival.
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